Last Tuesday I read on Dorie’s blog that Pierre Hermé sells croissants with Ispahan flavour. The picture she took of it looked sooo good, sooo drool-manufacturing, I decided to use my ‘wild-card’ & ask my Paris-residing brother to get it for me & bring it to London (I say ‘wild-card’ because I rarely want to ask him – the reason being, A, he is super-busy, & B, he is clueless about cakes!).

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This week is my lucky week. He happened to have traveled to London to see his Phd tutor about his papers. – And so there they were, MY croissants in a cute P.H. bag, with added bonus of twenty macarons (two each of ten kinds). Yessss…

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“Ispahan” is Hermé’s signature flavour, composed of rose, litchi & raspberry (Apparently he came up with this now iconic flavour-combo back in his days as a executive chef at Ladurée – & that the patisserie retains the rights to sell them too).

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This croissant version has rose-flavoured almond cream with a couple of lichis studded inside, & has freeze-dried bits of raspberry scattered on top of the white icing. Unfortunately mine wasn’t with pink icing like Dorie’s… (I want cute-sy PINK P.H.!) But regardless of the icing-colour, the taste was superb, with a mixed sensation of buttery almond cream & pastry together with the tangy raspberry bits & fruity lichis that refreshes the palate.

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Humpf… Why can’t we buy beautiful croissants like these in London?! Or, even better, why doesn’t Pierre Hermé open a shop here in London??

Oh my god, this is such a coincidence but I was in Paris this weekend and went to Pierre Hermé’s and bought myself some cakes and macarons! I ate the macarons just half an hour in fact hehehe. Didn’t try the Ispahan croissants though; being not overly fond of rose, almond and raspberry flavoured things. But what are litchis? Are they lychees? If they are, I like them!

Hi Jan! Yes, lychees! is that how you spell it? lol. oh well…
Lucky you that you were in Paris! by the way, the macarons, there’s some odd flavours he does, right? There were some that we thought was definately a “non”. “Wasabi & grapefruit” for example. and the “white-truffle”… On the otherhand, “vanilla” was heavenly, aswell as the “passion fruit”.

I didn’t try the wasabi and grapefruit because it wasn’t available when I went (probably sold-out?) but I did try the white truffle and I have to say I liked it! It could be because I’m kind of in truffle mode since I’ve been indulging in truffle eating over the weekend.

Hi Tommy,
I totally ‘ditto’ that about ‘everything is safe’ here. So boring. Infact, most stuff is also quite low-quality too… By the way, I love your pictures on your blog! It makes me want to go and buy lomo & polaroid cameras. I love that washed out/ out-of-focus look. I’ve been browsing your site, page by page, ever since your comment!
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Hello keiko-san!
You’re on. 一緒に行きましょうね！But hopefully we won’t wait that long to see each other！今度ロンドンに来たら是非マーケットに寄ってネ！ぜひ会ってみたいですっ。 xx
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Hey Jan,
indulging in truffle eating over the weekend?! Wow girly! You are indeed lucky… – My fave was the Vanilla :)

Well, I’m in Chicago, not NY, and neither of my two favourite Pierres (Herme and Marcolini) has a shop here. :( Worse yet, all the cake shops here seem to be slaves to the trend of savoury cupcakes. Yuck!!!

The Cheesecake Factory does have good cheesecakes, but it’s a national chain and fairly slick and corporate, so I tend to avoid it. If you’re ever in Chicago, the best cake shops (in my opinion, anyway) are the Swedish Bakery, Sweet Thang, Julius Meinl and Cafe Selmarie. Not a savoury cupcake in sight! ;)

It was so lovely to meet you at your stall the other Saturday (I’m the girl from Sydney who’s been here about 8 months and has been reading your blog for a long time) – the lemon drizzle cake was DIVINE – just the right amount of everything. Can’t wait to come back and try more – plus the markets are my new favourite!

Hello Julia!
Wow, thank you for leaving a comment on my blog!! .
It’s fantastic that we met – always a pleasure talking to blog readers. Finding out where you’re from and stuff. I have no idea about who reads this blog, so it’s very interesting!

I’m happy you liked the lemon drizzle cake! That cake is doing well on the stall, & is now a regular item!

It's one of my food-porn books that I take on train journeys instead of a novel. ~ I like that this book is just words, no pictures. Normally I would have said that every cookbook ought to have pictures for ALL the recipes, but, I make this the exception. The recipes read so well, that I can picture the dish being cooked in my mind...